Oakville's housing stock is compact and small-town in character, reflecting its origins as a railroad and lumber community. The town itself covers less than a square mile, with modest single-family homes on small in-town lots clustered near U.S. Highway 12 and city hall. Older, early- to mid-20th-century homes sit alongside later infill, and a portion of the housing has long served the farming and working families of the Chehalis Valley. Beyond the city limits, larger rural parcels, small acreage, and farm properties spread into the surrounding bottomland and the lower slopes toward Capitol State Forest. Because the city sits on the Chehalis River floodplain, buyers weighing riverside or low-lying sites typically take flood history into account. The setting favors those seeking a simple, established home in a quiet river town rather than large-scale subdivision development.

Oakville is small enough that it is understood as a single community rather than a collection of named neighborhoods. The town center runs along U.S. Highway 12, where city hall shares a building with the Timberland Regional Library branch, and the school campus, park, and fire department sit within a few blocks. Residential streets fan out from that core toward the Chehalis and Black rivers on the south and the rising timbered ground to the north. The Chehalis Reservation borders the city to the east, and the rural outskirts blend quickly into farms, bottomland, and forest, giving many homes an open, semi-rural feel just minutes from the center of town.

Life in Oakville moves at a small-town pace shaped by the river, the forest, and the agricultural calendar. The Sharon Grange, founded in the 1920s, remains a social anchor and is known for its annual oyster dinner, while the city's calendar includes an Independence Day parade that closes a stretch of U.S. Highway 12, the summer Zucchini Jubilee, a harvest festival, and holiday tree lightings and egg hunts. The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, which borders the city, contributes to the area's cultural fabric. Residents gather at the grange hall, the event center, and the riverside park, and the town's scale means neighbors tend to know one another. Shopping and larger services are a drive away in Aberdeen or the Centralia–Chehalis area.

The Oakville School District serves the city with a single elementary, middle, and high school on one campus system, and the district is small enough that students move through the grades together. A voter-approved bond funded a new elementary building that opened in 2022, along with upgrades to the high school and the addition of a preschool program. The district serves a few hundred students and employs a compact staff typical of rural Washington districts. For families seeking a broader range of programs, the larger districts of Aberdeen, Centralia, and Chehalis are within commuting distance, while the nearby Chehalis Reservation supports its own educational and cultural services for tribal members.

U.S. Highway 12 is Oakville's main corridor, running east–west through town along the Chehalis River valley. It connects the city westward toward Aberdeen and the Grays Harbor coast, and east to Interstate 5 near Grand Mound and Tenino, from which Olympia and Centralia are a short drive. The surrounding countryside is rural two-lane country, and the nearest rail service is the freight line that follows the valley. Residents typically rely on personal vehicles; the town's small footprint makes most in-town trips walkable, while commuting to Aberdeen, Olympia, or Centralia means a drive along U.S. 12 and connecting routes.

The Chehalis and Black rivers define outdoor life on the south side of town, with boating, fishing, and swimming popular in the warmer months. To the north, the Capitol State Forest offers thousands of acres for hiking, hunting, camping, horseback riding, and mountain biking, with trailheads a short drive from city limits. Al Brandt Municipal Park, across from city hall, provides a playground, picnic shelter, and basketball court, and the Oakville Regional Event Center hosts rodeos and adventure races. The riverside setting also makes the area a base for kayaking and canoeing, while the broader Grays Harbor and Olympic Peninsula destinations are within a day trip.